Women Veterans

Challenges

The current global war on terror illustrates a few deficiencies in services provided for women veterans. Never before have women servicemembers been engaged in constant combative environments. Participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom has forced them to expand their military roles to ensure their own survival, as well as the survival of their units. They sustain the same types of injuries that their male counterparts endure. Any future women veterans’ research will need to take into consideration the physical effects of combat on women veterans, not just mental effects of combat and military sexual trauma.

Since women veterans are sometimes the family’s sole caregivers, services and benefits designed to promote independent living for combat-injured veterans will need to consider other needs – like child care during rehabilitation. This dynamic should also be considered more when designing domiciliary and homeless women veteran programs. Homeless veterans’ service providers’ clients have historically been almost exclusively male. That is changing as more women veterans and women veterans with young children have sought help. Additionally, the approximately 200,000 female Iraq veterans are isolated during and after deployment, making it difficult to find gender-specific peer-based support. Reports show that one of every 10 homeless veterans under the age of 45 is now a woman. Access to gender-appropriate care for these veterans is essential.

In the past 10 years, the number of homeless women veterans has tripled. In 2002, the VA began a study of women and PTSD. The study includes subjects whose PTSD resulted from stressors that were both military and non-military in nature. Preliminary research shows that women currently serving have much higher exposure to traumatic experiences, rape and assault prior to joining the military. Other reports show extremely high rates, 20 to 40 percent, of sexual trauma while women are in the service. Repeated exposure to traumatic stressors increases the likelihood of PTSD. Researchers also suspect that many women join the military, at least in part, to get away from abusive environments. Like the young veterans, these women may have no safe supportive environment to return to, adding yet more risk of homeless outcomes.

Providing quality health care in a rural setting has proven to be very challenging, given factors such as limited availability of skilled care providers and inadequate access to care. Even more challenging will be VA’s ability to provide treatment and rehabilitation to rural veterans, including women veterans, who suffer from the signature ailments of the ongoing global war on terror – traumatic blast injuries and combat-related mental health conditions. VA’s efforts need to be especially focused on these issues.
Gaining access to the nearest facility providing gender-specific services can prove even more of an obstacle, since the nearest facility may be a community-based outpatient clinic that may not offer these services.

Statistics

There were 1.8 million living women veterans in 2008. In 2008 453,250 women veterans enrolled in the VA health-care system for care. The number of women veterans enrolled in the system is expected to grow by 33 percent in the next three years. Over 102,126 female veterans served in OEF/OIF as of September 2008. Of those, 44.2 percent have enrolled in the VA health-care system. Post-traumatic stress disorder), hypertension and depression were the top three diagnostic categories for women veterans treated by VA health care. Twenty-two percent of women screened positive for military sexual trauma, compared to 1.2 percent of men. Of all the OEF/OIF veterans who used VA health care in 2007, 16.7 percent of women and .8 percent of men screened positive for MST.

News

VA’s Center for Women Veterans Partners with the Center for American Women and Politics

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Center for Women Veterans (Center) entered into a memorandum of agreement (MoA) with the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, to increase women Veterans’ leadership and career opportunities, which will benefit the Nation’s workforce and address women Veterans growing needs.

The MoA will allow the Center and CAWP to leverage existing resources and increase coordination of activities to help women Veterans develop public service and community engagement skill sets, so they will be prepared for public and community service opportunities.
“Women Veterans often contact us for information about how they can continue serving,” says Elisa M. Basnight, Director of the Center for Women Veterans. “This MoA with the Center for American Women and Politics presents a prime opportunity for the Center to help prepare them for other forms of public service as it responds to a persistent need women Veterans tell us they have, which is the desire to continue to make a difference after the uniform.”

The Center, created in 1994 to monitor VA’s administration of benefits and services to women Veterans and to advise the Secretary on VA policy’s impact on Women Veterans, can provide advice to CAWP’s on how it focuses its resource information to address women Veterans’ issues.

CAWP is a source of scholarly research and current data about American women’s political participation. Its mission is to promote greater knowledge and understanding about women’s participation in politics and government and to enhance women’s influence and leadership in public life.

“The Center for American Women and Politics is delighted to collaborate with the Center for Women Veterans to provide more information and resources for women Veterans who want to engage more fully in their communities. Women who have already put their country first by serving in the military are exactly the people we need as public leaders,” said Debbie Walsh, Director of the Center for American Women and Politics.
Women Veterans represent one of the fastest growing segments of the Veterans population-about 10 percent of the total 22 million Veterans in this country. Today there are an estimated 2.2 million female Veterans. The Center for Women Veterans participates in collaborative initiatives with Federal/state/local governmental and non-governmental stakeholders, to improve opportunities for women Veterans.
For more information about women Veterans, visit www.va.gov/womenvet.